Wow! Costco’s third cookbook! With more than 250 recipes from 200
suppliers, Easy Cooking the Costco Way features Costco products, so you
can easily find the ingredients you need at a great price. And since the theme
is “easy cooking,” this book is sure to get a lot of use. The recipes cover the
gastronomic gamut from quickly assembled, everyday meals to dinner-party
appetizers—and even breakfast. You will be inspired to cook.

Everyone is crunched for time these days, so easy recipes have big appeal. While
there’s nothing better than cooking up some homemade goodness from scratch,
more often than not there just aren’t enough hours in the day to make everything
yourself. But with Costco’s huge variety of products, you can pull together a quickie
meal or go all out and spend the day cooking.

Being able to purchase great products makes cooking meals easy and delicious.
The wonderful practicality of prewashed spinach or mesclun, for example, is a
cook’s blessing. Then there are already-cleaned mushrooms, stir-fry veggies, and
fresh orange and grapefruit sections. Many recipes in this volume take advantage
of the ready-to-use produce available at various times of the year at Costco.

And with so many cool prepared sauces, salsas and toppings available, looking
like a gourmet chef is easy. Then there’s the Costco rotisserie chicken—a busy-schedule dinner essential! There are so many ways to use it, and Easy Cooking the
Costco Way illustrates a few of them well.

Almost everyone I know has bought the five-pound bags of meatballs in the
freezer section. Pop them in a baker, douse them with tomato herb sauce, dollop
on a little pesto and feta cheese, then bake them up. Voila! Serve them with
Italian-style focaccia warm from the oven—reheated, of course!

You’ll also find great recipes for spreads, breads, cheeses and more. It’s super
simple to wrap a luscious Brie in a pastry crust—made with refrigerated crescent
rolls—and then bake till warm and oozy.

And scope out some yummy sweet endings. Easy Cooking the Costco Way features
some fun ideas using premade cheesecake and brownies. Frozen cream puffs
topped with fudge and/or caramel sauce are the perfect luscious nibble.

This is an excellent opportunity to try new products, and these easy recipes from
Costco suppliers show you what to do with them. Easy Cooking the Costco Way
will introduce you to new flavors and new ways to cook when your time is at a
premium. And you’ll have more time to sit back, relax and enjoy.
Costco member and chef Kathy Casey is a food, beverage and restaurant-concept consultant and food writer. She owns Kathy Casey Food Studios and
Dish D’Lish. See more at her Web site, www.kathycasey.com.